From Koszalin we again headed back up towards the coast and then further west. The landscape subtly changes as you go this way, with villages appearing more neat, farms more prosperous. The typical set-up is a farmhouse, flanked by two barns, a style I have seen before in eastern parts of Germany. It was to one of these that we headed for another three night stay. Agnieszka was horrified to learn it was the house of the sołtys - the village chief if you like - but he seemed ok, busy as he was with the beetroot pickers, potato harvesters and road marking workmen who were also staying there.
Compared to Rekowo, the room was lovely apart from the incredible smell of Old Spice. The source of this was a plug-in 'air freshener' but the place reeked of middle-aged man. We were grateful, however, for this a day later when they decided to empty their cess pit and a stink of a different kind pervaded the room. Until then I unplugged it and we tried not to breathe. In the bathroom, the function of the bowl under the sink became obvious once you ran the tap and 75% of the water dripped into it. Someone, surely not a plumber, had tried to fix the leak using a cement but apart from making it look messy, it hadn't stopped a drop. The kitchen, across the yard, we had to share with all the workers, but it was functional enough to cook a bit of pasta and soup, although we had to keep hold of our dishes and pan in case someone walked off with them. Breakfast was taken in the room because it was so much less hassle.
Our first trip took us up to Pobierowo, another deserted summer-only town with a fantastic white sandy beach. The sun shone, the wind had dropped and the walk along the beach was lovely, topped off by a huge flock of cranes flying overhead, possibly heading to Wolin and the lakes there, or the river area around Szczecin. We never found out where they landed but it was fantastic to see them gliding across the blue sky, calling intermittently to each other.
In the middle of town we found this place, trying to cover all angles and cater for every type of customer, whether they want drink, food or entertainment and dancing. Some people obviously can't cope with the plethora of choices, as the graffiti in the bottom left corner shows; the frustration apparent in the crude sentiments expressed...
Further along the coast, and part of the poorly-signed Wolin National Park, is a stretch of cliff described by the guide as 'unique along this coast, except for one other near Gdynia'. On a damp and rainy day there wasn't much to see, but it was nice to get out of the car and wander along through the trees to a wartime look-out post and viewpoint. Apart from the sound of the sea, far below, and the wind rustling the leaves of the trees, there was pretty much no sound and it made me think how lonely sentry duty must have been here.
Back in Wilczkowo we took a turn around the pond, where silver fish jumped in the evening glow and little dogs barked with a volume out of all proportion to their size. Most of the farms and buildings seem to be used and looked after, with only one or two in need of repair, and there was easy access to the forest where once again we went on a mushroom hunt. It became more and more difficult to dry any we found as, with the weather warming slightly, the heating got switched off.
A typical barn and conker tree. Because conkers are inedible and schoolkids go to school to learn and not whack lumps out of each other's knuckles, there are always piles of conkers on the floor around these trees, plenty of which made their way back to England.
Foraging in the forest.
Obviously, with the forest so close, we had to go for a mushroom hunt. All along the A6 from the German border we'd seen gangs of spindly old men in threadbare coats and cloth caps, smoking like Russian factories, standing over buckets of freshly-picked mushrooms, waiting for customers. We had to have a go and, during a lull in the torrential rain, we wandered off for a couple of hours to see what there was. It felt so nice to be wandering in a 'proper' forest, as opposed to the bits of woods we have in England. I know that might sound a bit snobby, but you haven't been in a forest until you've walked for an hour, completely surrounded by trees, silent except for the wind sighing in the treetops, the occasional birdsong and the hacking cough of a bloke pushing a bike through the undergrowth, also looking for grzyby.
So this was our haul. We had them checked by Pan Tadeusz, who threw out a couple and advised us to peel one or two more. Then they were washed and chopped, with half going on some newspaper by the radiatoor to dry and the rest going in the frying pan with an onion and some garlic. Mniam mniam, picked and fried in under two hours. Can you get fresher than that?
On one of the postcards, this part of the beach is crammed full of people in bikinis, but in October we had the place pretty much to ourselves apart from a couple of brave souls wind-surfing. Back in town, we asked in the post office how to get to the national park and the woman was very helpful, breaking off from reading her magazine for just long enough to direct us to the nearest car park. The lives of celebrities obviously more interesting than two damp out of season tourists.
